ELSEWHERE

What a lot of pansies the British police have become: “Judges ordered a British teenager to pay $160 to a policeman for "mental anguish" after calling him "fat," He is not doing his job unless he is routinely called worse than that.

The various island nations of the Pacific receive more foreign aid per capita than almost anybody else. But, as usual, it has not helped their economic progress any. They are totally stagnant in fact.

Barbara Amiel does a detailed rebuttal of the Drabble dribble here. Excerpt: “when it comes to facts or ratiocination, she should be put in care”.

Paul Sheehan has some good criticisms of the media crusade against the unfortunate Peter Hollingworth. Excerpt: “A vast edifice of smears, accusations and fabrications has been constructed”.

The British Tories are total lost souls. They seem to think that the way to beat Labour is to be more Leftist than Labour! Their latest caper is a promise to abolish all university tution fees -- while Labour is taking the economically responsible course of putting the fees up! Britain is a strange place these days.

Shooting the messenger: A small group of minority politicians and prominent religious leaders in Florida is threatening a boycott of some of the state's largest industries in the hope of forcing the suspension of an achievement test that thousands of high school seniors (particularly blacks and Hispanics) recently failed. Sadly, however, scrapping the test will not make them any smarter or more employable.

And in New York even a lot of the teachers cannot pass basic competency tests!

"From a military perspective, the case for American withdrawal from NATO seems to have already been made. A number of commentators ... have pointed out that NATO is an anachronism rendered helpless by distrust and infighting. But there are also compelling economic grounds for American withdrawal. Simply, the American security guarantee perpetuates the continuation of the European welfare states and thus encourages economic sclerosis across the European continent. Thus NATO is not only useless, it's harmful”.

The Misanthropyst has a link to a truly breathtaking bit of stupidity about economics. It might have sounded sensible in 100 years ago but most of us have learnt a few things since then.

Michael Darby has high praise for John Howard.

The Wicked one thinks the Spanish Greenies have got their priorities right -- sex!

In my academic posting of May 13th here, I do my best to be polite about the bias against conservatives in academe.

*********************************

Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

**********************************